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Comment by seemuch | Hacker News Reader

I think you need to stop telling Chinese people what they need. We know what we need. As long as there is still cencorship, we will always have something for the argument. More to the point, an argument is not even what we need the most right now. It is not even close to the top of the list. We need the best search engine in the world much more than an argument with the government.

Looking at your comment makes me feel that it is not the Chinese people who are afraid of "losing an argument". If anybody, it is you. You believe so deeply in the evilness of Chinese government, that you are afraid your evidences are drifting away from you.

Just a hypothesis. No offense.

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> I think you need to stop telling Chinese people what they need. We know what we need.

Surely it's understandable from the outside looking in why people can't see what the Chinese people want/need. If you can't publicly post those "argument" you speak of under your name for fear of reprisal, how is anyone supposed to know any better?

I think the comment speculates because it's all they can do because it's less about "losing an argument" and more about not even knowing whether an argument exists. In the absence of clear feelings towards something (or the ability to state them), you should expect people to speculate and not be surprised when they are wrong.

Im sorry that my comment made you feel this way. I was not trying to win any argument here. My comment above would be my reaction if it would happen to me.

I think it helps to brainstorm all the aspects of a problem. Of course, I can not say what you need specifically, you are right about that.

> If anybody, it is you. You believe so deeply in the evilness...

Btw, this feels more like an attack than a hypothesis, just saying.

I am very sorry to make you feel attacked. I honestly did not mean that. I really appreciate you still being able to stay cool even when you feel offended.

It is healthy to disagree with each other as long as it does not get personal with assumptions. Thanks for the discussion :)

It confounds me that people who are not natively Chinese, or have never lived there, or ever used the existing search infrastructure (ex: Baidu) make sweeping claims with such confidence that they truly know what's best for Chinese people.

You don't have to directly suffer from genocide to know genocide is bad.

Please unpack for me how opening up Google Search in China precipitates genocide.

It does so by censoring information about what's going on in Tibet and Xinjiang, for example.

It causes genocide? Or it doesn't help prevent it? Those are 2 different things. It's unclear to me how Google's absence from the Chinese market actually ameliorates your concerns regarding Tibet.

It doesn't ameliorate them, because it will be censored anyway. But when Google goes there and does the censorship, they are complicit in covering up that genocide. And yes, that makes a difference - ethics isn't about pure utilitarianism, at least not for most people.

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